Linsey Cushing
September 12, 2007
Reflection on Searching the WWW
When I search the Web for information, my first spot to visit is always Google. After reading this information, I realized that although Google is the number one search engine, it still does not find every option that is available on the Web. I learned that when comparing search engines, many factors besides number of hits and amount of information available come into play. Yahoo Search is named as the second best search to Google, followed by Ask.com. I realized when reading this information that I have hardly ever accessed either of these search engines when doing research. I have been cutting my resources short and not even known it! Although a lot of information about Google, Yahoo, and Ask.com was available, I found that it was too over my head to understand. Even after reading what these terms were in the glossary, I still was somewhat lost. However, I found that I learned a lot about search engines in general. I was very surprised to find that search engines do not actually search the Web; rather, they have a certain database that the “spider” searches through in order to find the Web sites that I see after a search. I always thought that when I did a search engine, it was searching the entire Internet for sources. From now on, I plan on searching Google, Yahoo, and Ask.com for information so that I can get a variety of hits. Another aspect that I found interesting and surprising was that some Web sites are “invisible” to the search engines and therefore cannot show up as a hit when I search, even if these sites contain my topic. To find this invisible information, you have to search sites such as Google Scholar or belong to a group that subscribes to certain advanced searches, such as ERIC or PsychInfo. My advantage is as a Marshall student, I have access to EBSCO Host and I can search through this for many invisible Web sources. Another thing I had never heard of before today was Subject Directories. These Web sites allow you to connect to sites that are selected and maintained by certain people. For example, at www.lii.org , librarians compile the information. I will keep this type of search engine in mind when I’m looking for a specific topic. I really liked the ITools site and Keith Stanger’s site because each one is filled with search options that I did not have before. I will definitely use both of these sites in the future.
What I learned today about search engines and subject directories will be very beneficial in the future. It will impact my work because I now know that searching just Google does not give me nearly the amount of choices that I could get by searching Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, and some specific subject directories. I plan on utilizing many of these Web sites when doing research for this class and also in the future when I am doing research. This will help me to find valuable information much faster and also lets me not settle for mediocre information because it was all I could find. Hopefully, utilizing what I learned today will improve my research in the future and will be reflected in my final product.
